Obesity is a disease caused by excess body fat accumulation due to an imbalance between the body's energy intake and expenditure. Obesity leads to physical diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, gallstone disease, etc., and also affects mental health, and thus a countermeasure against obesity is urgently required (Kopelman P G. Obesity as medical problem. Nature 404: 635-643, 2000). Particularly, although the Orientals have a body mass index lower than that of Europeans, the Orientals have severe abdominal obesity, and thus are more susceptible to complications due to artery-related diseases such as hypertension, diabetes or hyperlipidemia, and for this reason, obesity management in the Orientals is more important.
Obesity which affects about 30-40% of modern persons is known as a strong risk factor that can cause hypertension, coronary artery disease, type II diabetes and various types of cancers. In obese persons, the risk of developing diseases is 4 times higher for hypertension and 10 times higher for diabetes than that in normal persons. Thus, obesity has a very close connection with the development of particularly diabetes.
In addition, thrombotic diseases together with obesity and diabetes are known as serious metabolic diseases. Thus, it is required to develop substances capable of more effectively preventing or treating metabolic diseases such as obesity, diabetes or thrombotic diseases.
Meanwhile, taurine, a type of food amino acid, is rarely found in plants, but is widely distributed in animals. It is known that taurine exhibits inhibitory activity against the sympathetic nerve of the brain to assist in blood pressure stabilization and stroke prevention, and inhibits the production of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol that causes arteriosclerosis, angina, myocardial infarction or the like. In addition, taurine is known to be effective against adult diseases such as various vascular diseases and dementia, as well as intravascular platelet aggregation.
However, it is difficult to make taurine into useful modifications or compositions having therapeutic activity against various diseases, and thus taurine is currently generally used as a raw material for amino acid food without changes.
Accordingly, the present inventor has made extensive efforts, and as a result, has developed a pharmaceutical composition for preventing or treating metabolic disease, which contains a modified taurine.